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How should a company come through a social media crisis?

Experts suggest ways to turn negative feedback into positive.

In an online era where everyone seems to be engaged in using social media, whether for personal or business, even the littlest details of a mess can rapidly spread and get out of control.But if a company is prepared, it's a lot easier to save its reputation and come through a crisis.

Singapore Business Review spoke with some chief marketing officers to talk about their respective social media crisis management plans and their thoughts on how to best respond to negative feedback and turn it into a positive.

How should a company come through a social media crisis?

We have a Social Care team and a Social Care Management plan which covers crisis management and immediate response around the clock. When a comment or feedback is picked-up on our social media platforms by our Social Care team, we first assess and classify the cases in accordance to the gravity of the situation. Based on this assessment, we would escalate the issue appropriately based on a predefined matrix that we have defined for the market. This would then be handled by trained Philips employees to engage the relevant stakeholders to resolvethe issue accordingly. We would seek to control the situation by continuing to drive constant communication and to listen and respond across all channels.

When faced with negative feedback, the best response is for companies to acknowledge the feedback in a timely manner and follow-up with the consumer to try to understand what caused the negativity. Once that has been established, you should then collaborate with the consumer to resolve and close the situation. A sincere and rapid crisis response would ultimately leave your customers with a favorable impression and give them renewed confidence in your company.

Singapore has over 3.6 million active social media users . The fortunate (or unfortunate) fact is that consumers are almost always connected and on social –and that means a social media crisis can happen anytime.

While it’s important to have a crisis response and management plan, it is critical for brands to engage in prevention through listening and engagement. Here are a few tips:

• Invest in social media monitoring tools. Social listening will help to identify messages with the right sentiment, product mentions, cut through the clutter and pick out insights that matter. The challenge is trawling through hundreds and thousands of chatter across various social platforms – and this takes time, attentiveness and accuracy. By investing in the right tools, brands can better understand their customers on social media, gain real-time insights into the context of each customer, enabling them to anticipate and deliver customized experiences.
• Develop a relationship now. Closely related to the first point, brands have to listen and adjust their message to make it relevant to their consumers. Often, brand loyalty declines due to lack of relevance – a direct result of not listening. The priority for brands should always be paying attention and trying to understand who your customer is. Listen to your fans/followers, engage with them, and encourage conversation. That’s going to make it easier for people to listen to you and even defend you when you run into trouble.
• Create guidelines. They need to clearly state what your page is about, what kinds of posts aren’t acceptable, and actions you’ll take on them. Post them quite visibly on your site. Those rules won’t prevent a crisis, but it helps to have them in place as you manage one.

Having a social media crisis management plan in place and being prepared is one thing, but to actually execute your crisis strategy is a different story altogether. The important thing to note is that no crisis is the same and no plan can capture a one-size-fits-all solution. Being well-prepared with the right analytic tools, and building a strong relationship with your customers will be the way to go.

When it comes to the digital world, time is of the essence. When faced with negative feedback, a fast (but carefully crafted) response will help prevent an issue from becoming a crisis, while a lack of reaction can turn a molehill into a mountain. The key is to listen, discover the facts, define the contextual circumstances, and respond appropriately to all issues and concerns.

The truth is handling negative feedback on social media is pretty much the same as dealing with them face-to-face – only with higher stakes and greater visibility. If a customer were standing in front of you with a complaint, you’d never ignore them, walk away from them, or simply apologize without offering a resolution. Likewise, that behavior will not be acceptable on social media. The silver lining is that when handled properly, a social media crisis can actually transform itself to a positive and opportune campaign for your brand. The smartest and best brands out there have been known to come out of a spontaneous attack with more loyal fans and customers than they had going in.

The best way around it will be to build a strong fan base before any crisis strikes. These fans will be the voice and advocates when your brand needs them most.

Lazada Singapore has an overall crisis management plan that cuts across channels, with a dedicated section for social media. As social media is a direct platform of communication with customers, our crisis management plan is complex and evolves based on each campaign, sale and launch we run. We have one main social media team, to ensure we maintain our voice across the various channels and keep our content aligned.

Our standard protocol involves following response times that differ for each channel, and what works best for each channel. Escalation to the regional team will be by a case-by-case basis; only if required and we will customize the action needed for the crisis. To share an example, our upcoming Birthday Sale that takes place mid-March has a crisis plan in place for any unforeseen issues and takes into account issues that have occurred in past sales that may be flagged on social media.

The best way to take negative feedback and turn it into positive responses is to show customers that:
a. You care about the issue
b. You are working to fix their issue
c. You are being honest with them about why the issue took place

Often brands attempt to compensate customers with monetary apologies, and while this can be done along with the above to help an affected customer, it should never be done so without addressing the issue they are facing.

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